FOX Increases FOXSoccer.tv Price, But Will It Be Worth It?

FOX Soccer announced that it’s increasing the FOXSoccer.tv broadband subscription price from $14.99 to $19.99 per month as of August according to an e-mail sent Friday to subscribers.

“Effective August 1st, 2011 the price of a FoxSoccer.tv monthly subscription will be increased to $19.99/month,” said the announcement from FOX Soccer. “The new FoxSoccer.tv monthly subscription rate reflects a significant investment in product upgrades, the availability of new platforms for use with your existing FoxSoccer.tv account and the evolving cost of rights fees.”

Part of the justification for the price increase comes from FOXSoccer.tv launching an iPad app on August 1 as well as the following new features to the live player:

Picture in Picture: Watch multiple matches simultaneously,

Live Chat: Chat with friends and soccer and rugby supporters during games,

Real-time Scores and Stats: Keep track of the action from the other matches, or hide the feature and catch up on other games later,

Manually adjust the bit rate: Adjust the bit rate if there are problems with the auto bit-rate detection mechanism.

The live player will also keep other features such as the pop-out player and DVR functionality to pause and rewind live action.

For the upcoming 2011-12 season, over 1,200 games are scheduled to appear on FOXSoccer.tv across 24 different leagues and cup tournaments. The leagues that will continue to be shown include the English Premier League, Serie A, Champions League, nPower Championship as well as soccer and rugby competitions. FOXSoccer.tv’s policy of showing Premier League matches that air live on FOX Soccer Channel later after midnight on demand will not change.

A central piece of FOX’s promotion for the FOXSoccer.tv service will be the “Anytime, Anywhere” message, to ensure that subscribers know they can watch the games by computer, iPhone and iPad with one subscription.

FOXSoccer.tv will debut their redesigned website and enhanced experience in August. It looks likely that FOX Soccer will include a 7-day free-trial in early August to encourage soccer fans to test out the new website and interface as well as the new iPhone and iPad apps.

While the monthly price is increasing by $5 in August, the annual pricing is the same ($159.99), but will increase to $169.99 as of September, 2011.

Whether soccer fans will sign up for FOXSoccer.tv at the increased rate will be contingent on two things. First, the biggest factor is how reliable the service is. While the quantity of matches shown on FOXSoccer.tv during the 2010-11 season was impressive, the reliability of the service was inconsistent. There were several times during the season when the service was either down or the live streaming was not working properly. However, there were periods of several weeks where the service quality was flawless. Hopefully the reliability and consistency will be much improved during 2011-12.

Second, it’s critical that the new interface of FOXSoccer.tv is so good that it justifies the increased expense. Not all FOXSoccer.tv subscribers have iPads, so it’s imperative that the experience on FOXSoccer.tv, most notably, is even better than the current one. If it is, and the service is reliable, there’s a much greater chance of soccer fans in the United States paying $19.99 per month with the confidence that the service is worth the money.

While $19.99 per month is not a trivial amount of money, it does represent good value if you’re someone who watches a lot of soccer games, especially Premier League matches. The experience of watching a ton of Premier League and Champions League matches on the convenience of your computer, phone or iPad is incredible. But the service has to be world-class to justify not only the cost but also the patience of a die-hard soccer fan who wants to see the best of the best.

Whether the $19.99 per month fee will be worth it will be dependent on how successful the launch is in August as well as how reliable the service is for the entire season.

About The Author

Publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris founded the site in 2005. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who was born and raised in Wales, has lived in Florida since 1984, and supported Swansea City since 1979. Last but not least, he got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.

146 Comments

I agree completely. I stream MLB.tv through my PS3 and its sometimes hard to distinguish it from HDTV. If Comcast won’t give us Fox Soccer in HD, it would be nice to at least have FS.tv in HD through PS3.

Either way, I’ll probably being suckered into paying the extra money since Everton is so often on there and so rarely on FSC or ESPN2.

That’s why I wont subscribe. To delay a match that is live is bollocks. ESPN3 can do it, why not FOX? I shut off my FSC+ also since I hated to see soccerworld ad verts during a live match on a channel I was paying $15 a month! I read on a FOX blog that they were thinking of adding FSC.tv to ROKU which I use. But with this new pricing they can go F themselves…

That is the exact option I am waiting for. Worka perfectly for the NHL and MLB. Having each game available online (live or archived) in HD and streaming through the PS3 would make the price so worth it.

I guess we shouldn’t hold our breaths. Here’s my email exchange with a clueless and useless customer support rep:

Me:

“I currently subscribe to foxsoccer.tv on a monthly basis. In an email you sent out yesterday you said that you plan on adding new platforms, specifically an iPad app. Are there any plans in the work to allow users to stream foxsoccer.tv via Playstation 3? I am considering buying a yearly subscription to foxsoccer.tv, and the ability to stream matches on PS3 would get me to subscribe in an instant.”

The response:

“Hi Matt,

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately the services wouldn’t be compatible on a PS3.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Best regards,
Ruth
Customer Services”

She didn’t even read my question. I know it’s currently not compatible. My question was will it be compatible. This is about as useless as the responses I got when the service failed all too frequently last season. What horrible customer service.

Not worth it for me. Other than watching the EPl games and Champions league games the rest of the programming is worthless. As i watch all the EPL and CL games at a bar ill just hold on to the extra $200+ a year.

Fox hasn’t gotten much right in the past, but again they are insisting they have “improved” their online experience. It didn’t happen on the other occasions they claimed to have done better, and there is no reason to believe they’ve finally figured it out. I suggest this is yet another deception. Don’t pay $19.99 to get what you should have been receiving for $14.99!

When I got the email I knew straight away that the increase was for little to know change. Basically a lot of people have complained about paying for the Apps when they ate already subscribers to Foxsoccer.tv. Fox responded by making the apps accessible for free by logging in with Foxsoccer.tv logins. So, now they are going to let is continue thi service but mow charge us an extra $5 so they can recoup the loss in cross platform subscriptions. The apps are useless anyway, as they have very limited functionality outside of news and stats. Only live broadcasts are permitted so forget depleting a match missed. With that said, I enjoyed my subsection last year for the most part. Hopefully this year they upgrade by proving the streaming. Many issues with audio unsynced, video looping back and skipping around and occasionally video getting scrambled up with strange pixelation.

So they are increasing the price because subscribers will be able to access the service via iPad and iPhone. Well, if I don’t have an ipad or iphone then why should I pay the extra money. Why not charge the extra fee only to those who have those devices. I’ll tell you why they won’t do this. The company responsible for managing foxsoccer.tv are amateurs. We got amateurish service last season.

Their service wasn’t up to snuff last season. They also had a two week trial period last season and it worked well enough that I purchased a subscription. Of course after that the service had its hiccups. On a few match days one couldn’t watch anything at all and on other occassions only after halftime. Streaming wasn’t great either a lot of the time.

ESPN3 is free and offers better service. I think I’ll pass on foxsoccer.tv. The yearly subscription looks like a good deal but of course the catch is if you aren’t happy after a month or two you’re out $159 or $169 depending on when you purchase the subscription. They want us to trust them that the changes will improve their service. Well, if the past is anything to go by it’s a hollow promise.

I’ll forego those extra games on foxsoccer.tv and follow the text commentaries available on many sites, including the clubs’ websites. One can also watch free streaming on several sites (illegal I know but if you’re desperate why not).

In response to your first point, I believe there was an article on this sight at some point this spring about the iPhone/iPad app that would cost $X – I don’t remember how much. And people thought is was outrageous to have to pay a second time to access the site in a different format. This is the other option, and lo’ and behold, now we all have to pay more!

Also, ESPN3.com is a better service with better quality, but they only have 1 EPL game a week. Maybe 2, tops. If that is your only source of EPL games, you won’t see much at all.

When the FOX Soccer iPhone app was first released, it was sold for $7.95 per month. But it’s now available for free with limited features. But if you have a FOXSoccer.tv subscription, you can use your credentials on the iPhone app to watch streaming games live on there too.

You bring up a very good point. It is one thing to offer a package deal to those that would cross platform, but why force everyone into it? I don’t have an iPad… won’t get an iPad. I don’t want to watch a game on a small screen. I hook my laptop to the 37″ tv and watch that. Seems silly to lump everyone together.

And at $20 a month, it is getting pricey. Now don’t get me wrong, as the blog post noted, the quantity of the coverage is tremendous. I can watch just about every Stoke City game. What isn’t great, however, is that the video quality, always had problems, even when the video wasn’t looping or doing whatever I didn’t know was actually possible for a stream to do. The video, on good days always would get hiccups and go from SVGA to CGA quality for a couple minutes, which was typically preceded by a stutter (something I’ve never had happen while watching Netflix). I’d look the other way at $15 a month, but if you pop up the price, my tolerance for that sort of thing begins to drop quickly.

I’ll give it a month or two, but I’ll be willing to give up and just go with FSC if the video hasn’t improved. Being able to watch stuff on an iPad won’t be justification for me to pay more, near flawless video would.

Based on last year’s schedule, how many nPower Championship games are aired every week? Fox Soccer Plus airs one nPower match a week, but if FoxSoccer.tv airs more than one a week, I might ditch the channel for this app.

Thanks for the info, Gaffer. It was rather nice being able to watch most Blackpool games last year instead of the handful of times in their previous seasons in the Championship. I imagine since they gained some notoriety last season they’ll be shown frequently as one of the Championship games. I certainly hope that’s the case!

Of course it’s not worth it. This is FOX we’re talking about. When have they ever done anything right. I cannot believe the gall they have to increase the price whe they couldn’t deliver decent service for less money. What do you expect from a Murdoch company. Lying is their mantra!

I’ve already lost confidence in the “new” foxsoccer.tv. After receiving Friday’s email from them about the changes, I sent an email asking to purchase the yearly subscription as I am presently on the monthly subscription plan that expires early August (I had my monthly plan on hold for the summer). Their web site has no directions on how to change subscription plans. I was told via email thatI would have to cancel my present subscription which they could do for me if I replied to the email. However, I would have to wait till August when my present subscription ends to purchase the yearly plan from the website. Why couldn’t they just switch my subscription plan? I don’t think these people know what they’re doing. I asked them to cancel my monthly subscription but I have no intention now to purchase the yearly plan or even the monthly plan. If they cannot make changing plans simple how are we supposed to believe they will improve on last season’s dodgy perfromance.

No way. Chris, I have to say the issue is not technical improvements or multiple platform access but PRICE. With ESPN and ESPN3 increasing their soccer coverage for free or more correctly as part of your cable or internet packages to may an additional $20.00 is out of sight.

FSC has improved it’s services and production values and promises more. Why would we need more at $20.00 a month. I thought $15.00 a month was too high but went with it but at $20.00 I went directly to the cancel button. Other free options exist for coverage of the EPL that one can not justify the price. With the Iphone giving access to Uk based radio a service like Fox Soccer tv means less. Listen to Talk Sports roundup if your missing your game.

I do subscribe to MLS Match Day Live and it is a great value at $40.00 for the season even with certain games blacked out. I play it via a hook up on my HDTV and love it. It is highly recommended. Also. right now you have FREE English language coverage of the Copa America on Youtube. No football fan should miss it. Start your day off with ESPN 3 coverage of the Women’s World Cup.

Gaffer, do you know the company that manages the foxsoccer.tv service? I know they are from abroad because my monthly subscription charge on my credit card shows a foreign transaction fee. I’d like to know more about the company before I purchase anything for the coming season. I wasn’t too pleased with what they rolled out last season and some of the problems I experienced. Is it the same people that managed the site last season or are they new?

Cricketlover, great question. The company who handled FOXSoccer.tv last season is the same that will be doing it next season. It’s the Perform Group, a company out of the UK that hosts the vast majority of Premier League club websites as well as other streaming services. They’re definitely legit. Not flawless, but they’re not a fly-by-night firm.

“FOXSoccer.tv’s policy of showing Premier League matches that air live on FOX Soccer Channel later after midnight on demand will not change.”

…is unacceptable. On DirecTV, FSC costs an extra $13 a month. No way am I going to pay for both services. If there were any other way for me to reliably watch games, I would switch in a heartbeat. Fox isn’t going to have this monopoly forever.

Just get the 60 dollar a month spanish programming, it has all the soccer channels plus espn deportes which youcant get on sports pack, plus it has basically all the channels you get in the 1st tier of the english channel programming. I get history espn in englih, nat geo, the works.

Personally, IF the quality of the feeds really has improved, then it will be worth it for me. (that’s a big IF though – I remember trying to watch the Sunderland v Liverpool match in March, was it? Not only was the quality of the picture atrocious, but the feed keep skipping and jumping BACKWARDS. The game would be at 30 mins, then suddenly the feed jumps back to 23 mins. It was infuriating!)

The ability to watch multiple matches at a time with a dvd function sounds cool, and being able to chat with other fans also sounds like an good upgrade.

It also makes sense for me, because I plan to cancel my cable. FSC is really the only thing that I watch on TV. I plan to cancel that service, watch live games in a bar and catch the other games on Foxsoccer.tv or ESPN3.com. So, $20 a month for all EPL and Champions League games isn’t bad at all, I don’t think. But I understand how those of you who pay for regular cable + $15 a month for FSC would be pissed.

Thank you gaffer for the information that it’s the same company that will be hosting the service again this season. Given last season’s problems and the raising of their rate for this season it gives me reason to ponder to continue subscribing this season.

Does anyone know where I can get information about listening to match commentaries on internet radio? As someone above posted it looks like a viable alternative even if there is no picture. I grew up listening to short-wave radio so this will harken back to my youth and the wonderous world of radio commentary.

The foreign fee from this company can only be avoided if you credit card doesn’t charge a fee on foreign transactions (usually from 1 to 3 percent). Capital One is one of the few companies that don’t charge one.

socceraudio.com used to have great information on where to listen to matches but it looks like they aren’t keeping it up to date. TalkSport.uk carries some PL games. For the most part though, I think you do need a subscription.

Try http://www.talksport.co.uk/radioplayer/live/
or if you follow a specific team you can subscribe through their website and get the local BBC Radio feed, I’m not sure but you might get the after match phone ins and stuff too.

I am also interested in radio commentary. Cannot justify paying $19.99 a month for crappy feed and service. Maybe there should be a Premier League Radio Schedule on this site just as there is a Premier League TV Schedule. How about it?

I watched the Copa America game between Argentina and Bolivia last night on youtube, courtesy of Univision. What a great idea for people who cannot get Telefutura or Univision on their cable or satellite. The feed was pretty good and better than foxsoccer.tv’s feed last season. I cancelled foxsoccer.tv after 4 months as I wasn’t happy with all the problems with their site and feed.

Why is it that ESPN3 and other companies can roll out a terrific web-streaming service but Fox cannot? The others are free and you have to pay for Fox. They must think we’re idiots. By the way, they say they are increasing the rate by $5 to offset the cost of making it available to iphone and ipad owners. So those who don’t have iphones or ipads are paying extra for others to use the service? Whose brilliant idea was this at Fox?

Thank god there’s so much free streaming of games available online even if some of it is illegal. When you do stupid things like Fox then what do you expect.

Of course it’s not worth it. It wasn’t worth it at $14.99 a month. This is just bad business sense by Fox. If they had left the price at $14.99 but improved the product such that it was a big hit then I could see them increasing the rate after subscribers felt they were getting value for their money. But to ask people to pay more for a service that was poor to begin with is just downright outrageous. Goes to show that Fox is really a second-rate company.

Instead of building a loyal customer base with a great product at a lower subscription price Fox is doing just the opposite. Bad business.

I tried foxsoccer.tv for a couple of months and cancelled as I wasn’t satisfied with their feed quality. $19.99 a month is too steep a price to pay for a poor product. Even if the product is better now it definitely isn’t worth the new price.

Most people who subscribed to foxsoccer.tv did so because they couldn’t get Fox Soccer Plus. Those who could get it paid $14.99 a month, the same as foxsoccer.tv. Now foxsoccer.tv will cost more than Fox Soccer Plus. The one usually has flawless quality and the other doesn’t. Guess which one you pay more for? Thanks Fox. You must think we’re a bunch of morons.

I’ll get it. $20 is a fair price for me. I get to watch every Fulham match live with a good quality stream, didn’t seem to encounter the problems other people were having last year. I also usually watch a Championship match per week as well as 1 or 2 random Premiership matches and Champions League when that’s available. So that’s around 15-20 matches per month for $20, not too shabby. Only gripe I have is no score and time for Champs League last season.

I really had pretty much no problems with .tv last year, but then because of my work shift I rarely watched the games live, I just watched when it was convinient to me and avoided any websites that would give away results prior to me watching the games. It was annoying waiting until midnight, but as I am awake late, it wasn’t that big a deal.
I canceled my subscription when the season ended but will probably hit the $159 deal for the start of the next season. I also have 3 months free of LFC.tv which means I can watch the preseason games and for the 1st month or so of the season there as well.
$20 may not be a trivial amount, but I clearly remember the only option was one match on PPV for $30. We are still in a very good place, and trust me most Brits would kill for pretty much every game streamed for that price.

$20 isn’t that expensive, really, especially when considering the options available once you subscribe. The problem is, Netflix costs less than half that, and you get a much better video quality.

I don’t want cheap. If they offered the entire EPL season (no limitations from FSC showing a game) for $360 or $30 a month, but you got HD and consistent quality streams, I’d probably pay for it. But right now, you do get a less than great signal now for $20.

Definitely not for me. Overpriced and of poor quality. On the surface it looks like a good deal because of all the games they offer. The problem is that the streaming they offer is poor and much worse than free ESPN3.com as well as the free service offered by Univision on youtube. So why would someone pay for crappy service. It was overpriced at $14.99 a month and it is even more overpriced at $19.99 a month. Buying the yearly plan to get the discount is also a huge gamble as you cannot cancel and get a prorated refund. You’re out $159.99 . Ouch!

Why pay for a terrible stream when you can get it for free. Lots of online sites that show lots of live soccer for free. I’ll pay when the experience is as good as cable or satellite. By the way, you can get FS+ for $14.95 a month if your cable or satellite offers it. So why are they charging $19.99 a month for a worse experience. They must think we’re suckers.

too true. They are so easy to use. My site of choice has 40ish choices PER MATCH. And after a while, I saw some channels that were always broadcasting the big matches live through veetle, which I could turn into a bookmarked safari app on my homepage. Guess who watched the champions league final at work on their iphone…

I subscribed to Foxsoccer.tv throughout the 2010-11 season. In spite of the inconsistent service and having to avoid the news until 12am EST (9pm PST) while I await the availability of a replay, I rather thought that it was a fair deal. The reason being, I do not have cable TV and cannot afford it. Cable or satellite television subscriptions to Fox Soccer (and Plus), and perhaps GolTV, are outrageously priced if those are the only channels one intends to watch. Besides, where else can one watch Ligue 1 weekly, not to mention “unglamorous” matches such as Fulham v Blackpool?

Perhaps I am mistaken, but no matter how I calculate cable or satellite TV subscriptions, Foxsoccer.tv, and the occasional visit to the pub for live matches, seems to me the most affordable option.

However, I agree with the lot of you about the unnecessary price increase, particularly as they have not yet proved themselves worthy of such. I will think twice about renewing my subscription in August.

For what it’s worth.

PS. On the weekend, I’m sure I pulled my hair like anyone else who relied on consistent service by Foxsoccer.tv.
PPS. I never had problems watching Olympique de Marseille.

Instead of first improving the product that was dodgy to begin with Fox has decided to make big changes to the product and hike the price. They want us to trust them that the changes they have in store will both improve on last season’s experience and have added features. They provide no evidence for this.

Last season people were unsubscribing because of the poor quality and many hiccups during their live streams. People did not unsubscribe because they wanted access to iphone and ipad or because they was no pip and live chat. They should first fix the reliability issue which is what people complained about.

No, I will not be subscribing to foxsoccer.tv this season. More is not better.

It is still an insult that there is no discount to paying cable customers who through no fault of their own, can’t get FS+.

Considering my year long subscription (that I paid for) to setanta-i was callously cut after the new company took over. I hope the quality is more consistent next season. Will they be Android compatible?

Let me get this straight. The same company that hosted the service last season and who couldn’t provide a reliable product are going to charge more for things that have nothing to do with reliability but added features that do not address the quality of the feed issue. They want us to take their word that it will be a better product despite their poor track record. Have faith in us they say. These guys must have gone to a faith-based business school. Shocking!

I’ll stick with it. I don’t have cable or directv and I don’t have time to watch matches live. I can watch HD torrents of matches or I can decide not to steal and instead watch replays on foxsoccer. Doing so late last season I did not notice any major issues with quality and it was also nice not having to locate torrents.

I am wondering if you will be able to steam the iPhone or iPad to an AppleTV. Also they need to offer the games on delay through iPhone and iPad. If we are paying 20 bucks a month we need to have more flexibility to watch.

What audacity by foxsoccer.tv to increase the subscription price on something that was lacking to begin with. At least if they went with another company besides the Perform Group that messed up last season there might be some hope of a better product. The foxsoccer.tv website is terrible to begin with and add to that the reliability problem and you have a mess that they want people to pay more for. Sorry not for me.

This is what happens when Fox owns the rights to the EPL games in this country. Let’s hope ESPN outbids them the next time around for a better experience both on cable/satellite and online. Fox’s online site is just terrible and I’m glad I didn’t subscribe given all the negative feedabck from those that did. I’m glad I saved my money and will save it again this season. By the way, why do they want others to pay for ipad and iphone access if they’re not going to use it. Seems stupid to me.

I completely agree with Gareth. It’s because of scamming the customer by Fox that people turn to unauthorized streaming. I also wouldn’t mind paying if foxsoccer.tv was reliable with high quality service. Until that happens I won’t pay their exhorbitant $20 a month.

Send them a message telling them that unless the quality improves you will not subscribe, and also send them a message saying you’d like it on Roku/Blu Ray player apps. Explain that you dont like the fact price has increased but quality doesn’t appear to have.

I went to the Perform Group website and nowhere did they mention that Fox was one of their customers. I wonder why. They host Chelsea’s website. Their own website has links that don’t work. I’m not sure I would trust these guys. I’ll save my money and follow the games I’m interested in on sites that have text commentary for free. If there was an internet radio option of voice commentary for a nominal fee I’d be interested in it. But I definitely won’t pay foxsoccer.tv for what they offer.

Trust Fox to get their online offering all wrong. Bad pricing, bad product, bad everything. All the free online sites, including ESPN3, are so much better. And did I mention they’re free.

I’ve decided to drop my sports package with FSC so the only EPL games I’ll be watching will be on ESPN2. The rest I’ll check out for free online or follow the text commentary on the various clubs’ websites. I refuse to pay for rubbish quality.

I wonder if the people at foxsoccer.tv are aware of all the criticism about their online product. Maybe if they were invited to join this blog it might make them understand better why people are not likely to subscribe. Or maybe they don’t care and feel with the new pricing they can meet their financial goals because a certain number of people will always subscribe regardless the quality of the product. My understanding is that once you get the annual plan you cannot unsubscribe if you’re not happy and get any money back for the period remaining.

Charles, you hit the nail on the head. Fox is banking on the fact that a certain number of EPL fans will subscribe no matter how reliable or good the stream because they want to watch their team play week in and week out and don’t want to miss out if their team is going to be on foxsoccer.tv. It’s not about quality or reliability but about availability.

I subscribed to foxsoccer.tv last season and then cancelled after a few months when the streams got really bad. What they should be doing is trying to make the stream s for games better with no interruptions or hiccups. Instead they seem to want to add more features, most of which have nothing to do with the core of the product which is a better quality stream that works. So instead of improving on the one thing that is the reason why people subscribe, the live game, they want people to pay more for other stuff. It’s just a gimmick. They cannot guarantee an interference-free experience watching the live game so they use smoke and mirrors to make you feel they’ve improved the product when in essence they haven’t fixed the main problem just added features that have nothing to do with the streaming issue. I agree fox should be put out of business for this kind of deception.

As has been said, FOX has got us for now. I will reluctantly purchase the $159 yearly plan. According to my calculations it is still cheaper than going to the pub every Saturday and Sunday, and Monday, and oh sometimes Wednesday, don’t forget Thursday to watch EPL and CL footy. I don’t know about you, but I can’t step foot into a pub without buying at least 3 pints. That adds up over the course of an EPL season. Not only that, many pubs in the US don’t open their doors early enough to show live matches. You have to rely on some bloke that works there to remember to DVR so you can watch can watch it later. I don’t have cable, so I rely on FOXSoccer.tv for my EPL lifeblood. I have had some problems with the feeds, but far fewer than when trying to find stream a stable illegal feed. Illegal feeds are just not dependable enough. Club sites such as LFCTV are a cheaper option, but you get only your club’s games, usually on delay. So until ESPN or some other company buys EPL tv rights in the US, fanatics are hostages to FOX.
ESPN3 is a limited option for watching matches right now. Many of the higher profile matches (Liverpool, Manu U, Chelsea, Arsenal) are only shown live. So, if you sleep in on a Saturday or a Sunday, then you miss the match. The announcers on ESPN, Steve McManaman and Ian Darke, are great; however, Darke has the intolerable habit of updating scores around the league. I have often wondered if ESPN puts him up to this in order to piss off those who have paid for FOXSoccer.tv and were planning to watch those matches on delay later.
An acceptable solution would be if ESPN were to launch an all football ‘soccer’ cable channel and charge $10-13 per month. Those subscribers would get discount, say an added $5.99 per month, to access the online version of their product. An online version would cost $10-15 per month. It would be all that Fox is and isn’t (stable streams, all matches in real time as well as archived, clean user-friendly website, added leagues such as La Liga, MLS (don’t laugh) and Campeonato Brasileiro, access on devices other than just iphones and ipads, ROKU / Playstation / PS3 availability, possible tiered pay plan to tailored to your watching habits, I can go on, but I won’t. This post is long enough. Until then, I don’t blame anybody for voting with their feet on the FOXSoccet.tv increase.

I think the picture quality was pretty decent last season. The quantity of soccer available on TV/ internet has increased so much in 12 years I have been out here that I have to take a perpective on this…I get the annual plan now , and keep fingers crossed on service.

Gaffer what I was interested in was your take on what leagues they might add as part of their “upgrade” this summer.Maybe more championship games & even the odd D1//2 game – so I can still dream about watching the mighty cherries on tv out here , outside of the occasional FA cup game!!

Count me as one of the dissatisfied subscribers last season when the price was $14.99 a month. There’s no way I’m going to pay $19.99 a month when all they’ve done is added things that are of no use to me. What they should be targeting is improving the reliability and quality of the games. There were too many interruptions and problems with the live streams and that’s why I cancelled. The yearly plan looks like a good deal until you realise that you pay it all upfront and you cannot cancel if you’re not satisfied in between a get any money back.

No, $19.99 a month or $159.99 a year are both not worth it in my opinion. If the quality of the live games were better than I would consider it. I don’t mind paying for something that works as it should. But I won’t pay for something that doesn’t. ESPN3 and lots of other online sites provide a much smoother and better experience and the’re for free. Why foxsoccer.tv cannot do the same is beyond me. Why don’t they just hire the same people who do the ESPN online site. That one works flawlessly.

Fox can’t even get their online site right. Why are we surprised. Until ESPN gets the rights to the EPL I’ll restrict my viewing to only those matches shown on ESPN and follow the others online on the many free sites out there.

The price increase is definitely not worth it. They need to fix all the problems that plagued the site last season first before adding anything new and hiking the price. People want better perfromance from the live video/audio stream, not PIP, live chat, etc. What good is PIP if the reliability and quality of the picture is crappy to begin with?

I tried foxsoccer.tv for about three months and cancelled because I was having too many problems with the quality of the video/audio. Sometimes you got nothing for an entire half, other times the video would back up a few minutes and this would continue throughout the game totally ruining it. The best you could do is send them an email and their reply which came after the game was over was never satisfactory. I cannot imagine paying more for the same. If they had fixed all the existing problems and kept the price at $14.99 a month then I would be tempted to subscribe again. Otherwise it’s not worth it.

I’m going to wait till I get positive feedback from subscribers before shelling out my hard-earned money. I know they probably will have a free preview week but I think I’ll wait for a month before deciding if it will be worth it. Maybe if they added a free month to the first month’s subscription it might tempt me more. In that way I’ll have 2 months to test out their product and I’ll only be out $19.99 if I cancel.

I think Fritz has a great idea. If foxsoccer.tv offered a free month if you subscribed for their monthly plan then more people, including me, would sign up. For me it’s not the price but the reliability and quality of the live broadcasts that worry me based on last season. I will gladly pay for quality. I’m tempted by the $159 yearly plan but if the problems of last season are still there then you’re out all the money you paid. Too much of a risk for me.

One of the reasons most people subscribe to foxsoccer.tv is because they cannot get Fox Soccer Plus on their cable/satellite. Fox Soccer Plus costs $14.95 a month and has no streaming or reliability problems. So increasing the price of foxsoccer.tv to $19.95 a month for something that is plagued with problems doesn’t make sense at all. So definitely not worth it.

Yes it is true that foxsoccer.tv carries live games that FS+ doesn’t. It was the same last season when the price for both was $14.99 a month. The main reasons for the price hike according to foxsoccer.tv was for the add-ons like iPad and iPhone access without having to buy a different subscription (was $7.99 amonth), live chat and PIP, etc. For those of us who don’t have iPhones and iPads we’re basically being asked to pay for something we won’t use. For those who have iPhones and iPads it’s a savings of $2.99 a month. Great for them but not for us.

Are they not going to retain the french ligue 1 matches? Gaffer, any news if espn3 will get those or at least some? it sounds to me fewer games, not more.
Also, will they get the 6 nations rugby? that could be worth the price.

I’m one of those no cable/satellite people who watched most games on Foxsoccer.tv on delay. I also watch rugby. Last year I totally enjoyed the service. The major technical issue I had was a disconnect sometimes between the visuals and the commentary.
For me the main issue is not price, it is content – many of the big games last year were on delay (and for me midnight means next day). Gaffer do you know if the same rules will apply this year?
I got the feeling last year they were trying to balance making the streaming service attractive without pulling too many subscriptions from the cable/satellite channel. That’s s pretty delicate balancing act and it obviously becomes harder as the price rises for the streaming service.

Clarification – I don’t usually watch live but I like to be able to see the game on the same day – say Sat evening instead of Sat morning. Delaying the first transmission until midnight is the practice I would like to see ended.

I would gladly pay $19.99 a month if there were no delays or at least shorter ones and the video hiccups would get cured. Midnight means waiting the next day, usually after I get off work which at least 24 hours later from the original game time.

When the service is working it is great and the picture is far better than ESPN3. If you are listening Foxskccer.tv, please address these issues.

This discussion is a week old, but I think it’s very relevant to how we consume European football in this country.

Raising the price by ~$50 per year, this is what I’d expect:
– Much more robust performance. Breakdowns need to be extremely rare.
– Dedicated apps that allow both live and on-demand broadcast in at least 720p resolution.

What I would like to see going forward, to add value to this, would be any or all of the following:
– Acquiring rights to have all nPower Championship matches accessible on FS.TV, at least on demand. Still broadcast 1-2 per week on FS+.
– More platforms for accessing content. Obviously it takes $ to develop apps, but certain platforms might make particular sense financially.
– Access to British productions discussing the Premier League. Could be released the midnight after showing on FOX Soccer.

If they improve the iPhone app to access all content, both live and on-demand, I’ll likely cancel FS+ and go directly to FS.TV. I’d just have to invest a little extra money to get the HDMI connector for the iPhone.

This has been an interesting read. I was thinking of subscribing to the service but have many reservations.. now I see all the complaints and the planned increase!

One really big issue I have is that of the two times I have contacted them for assistance, they have helped 0 times. It is VERY clear they are outsourcing support to non native english speaking countries.. which would be fine, if English was well understood. As it sits now ‘john’ or whomever it is clearly doesn’t have much of a grasp and that leads to an extremely frustrating experience. I actually wish they would just tell me their native language so I could try to get through that way.

This is a lot of money to pay for a service that apparently has so many issues… and there are other ways of getting matches faster. It’s a pity Fox doesn’t realize that providing bad service and pricing so high is not the way to get US residents to subscribe for sure. I believe that @ $20 a month it may be more expensive than MLB TV? which would be crazy in this country…even the same price would be crazy, without even considering the GREAT apps that are available and the quality of the streams.

Pity I’m a football fan as the MLB fans have it pretty much made (blackouts stink)

I Know I’m late to the table but I’ve been busy and just found out they have increased the price. Bummer… I had to cancel my subscription today upon hearing the news. I have had my account since last August and really hate to cancel, but $20/Month is absolutely ridiculous. The site is still in its early stages and riddled with problems; poor quality, streaming issues, Delayed Matches, sub-par customer support. Looks like its back to the free streams… Ughh. Oh well, at least they can’t stamp “IDIOT” on my forehead!

Seems to me that a lot of the premier games on fox soccer tv are now time delayed..way less choice for more money..only one game that I want to see in august. I have fsc anyhow..last year I had both…not this.

The only Premier League matches time delayed on FOXSoccer.tv are the ones shown live on FOX Soccer, which are typically three games — one of the Saturday 10am ET ones, the 12:30pm ET Saturday match, and the 11am ET Sunday game of the week.

Why not make the delay shorter? It’s very frustrating especially when it’s all the BIG games that get delayed. If you are a Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City fan you will almost never watch a live game.

Nelson/Gaffer
I think the long-term schedule, posted on The Foxsoccer.tv site, can be misleading as they seem to wait until all the games for FSC and ESPN are selected before they post them.
Having said that, after a couple of years of interent only, I’ve gone back to FSC and ESPN2 as it does seem almost all the big games are not being streamed live anymore.
The 12.30 Saturday game and the 11am Sunday game are selected by Sky UK and are usually “marquis games”. As the Tuesday ECL games rules out a Sunday kick-off for those teams, sometimes the Sat 7.30am can also be high profile. Result? Lots of live games on Foxsoccer.tv but, when you apply the rules laid out by the Gaffer, very few of the super high profile matches.
On the other hand if you support a team that isn’t one of the “big six”, or if you follow the French League or the English Championship, there are a lot of games for you.
So perhaps the service is better viewed as a supplement rather than a stand-alone?

Am I right in assuming that all games shown on Fox Soccer Plus are shown on Foxsoccer.tv but not all games shown on Foxsoccer.tv are on Fox Soccer Plus? If so, the combination you mention is perfect.

I’m old enough to remember the days of Lionel Bienvenu and 1 hour of football a week. In NY FSC HD and ESPN2 HD are part of the standard FIOS triple play package, and for an extra $160 for the reason we can get pretty much every game live. Thst’s pretty amazing. And its a lot cheaper than the folks back in the UK and Ireland have to pay

Correct. All FOX Soccer Plus games are shown on FOXSoccer.tv. But there are many games that are shown on FOXSoccer.tv that are not shown on FOX Soccer Plus.

I remember paying $20 as an admission fee to go into pubs on a Saturday morning to watch each game. So paying $20 for an entire month for tens of games is a drop in the bucket. The name of the game will be whether the quality and consistency of the FOXSoccer.tv streams can be flawless this season though.

There is no technical limitation, if anything it would be more complicated to stream live. It’s not like they keep them around for replay long either. It’s bloody shameful how fox are trying to get blood from a stone. unlikely to change unless people don’t subscribe.

markwAugust 7, 2011

does anybody know how to unsubscribe from the foxsoccer.tv. i purchased a yearly subscription last year. it end in october but i am not the recurring renewal plan and want to stop it.

the fckers on fox soccer.tv offer no info in the faq’s about unsubscribing and even the terms and conditions section mentions clicking on the “unsubscribe” button in the my account section but low and behold it is not there.

i have emailed them but don’t expect much back so any help is appreciated.

Gaffer – do you have a phone number for FSC TV Customer support – Im unable to reset my password & they have not replyed to my email having submitted it 3 days ago (the email address in the contact us section) – Could not find any number to call – very frustrating , I’m paying for a service I cannot access !!

Unfortunately their customer support, or lack thereof, is perhaps the biggest issue. In the times I’ve mailed them it didn’t even seem they read the message, instead copy/pasting a generic reply or skipping over entire subjects. They also have not been what I consider fast.

I’ve signed up for a month with a view to a year, but I’m leaning towards canceling at this point.

Spoilers on iOS
Poor support
Lackluster os x support
App crashing on iOS
No support for 360 live

So far so good for me. I am testing this out to see if I can get rid of cable (Comcast) completely. Since we don’t get FSC in HD here, and the quality of the SD signal is so bad, I see this as a perfect replacement. That on top of ESPN3.com and the special offer MLS Live has running, I can save $60ish a month by canceling cable.

I understand that HD streaming isn’t yet a perfected thing, but the amount of games that I can watch vs what I get on TV, it seems like a no brainer.

Watched a bit of a Championship league game yesterday. Like the new interface, and the quality of the stream seemed decent (I was generally at 2.4 Mbps), but I’ll need to see a whole game before concluding the video quality improving as a whole.

As others said, the fact that we will get the best games delayed until midnight YET AGAIN is a game-changer for me. I root for a specific team in the EPL but want to see the best games while traveling which I do often.

The fact that we can’t get those games shows what a clusterpuck all of this is…give me a break

Like others have said, why are we being charged $5 a month more? There is absolutely nothing in the changes worth paying that absurd amount more per month

Remember, these are the same morons who at first wanted to charge people for FoxSoccer.TV then charge again a FULL subscription for people wanting to use the iPhone app. These idiots can’t seem to put one foot in front of the other without tripping. When all games are given to use live and the price is dropped, let me know. Until then, no thanks

These rates may get some people, but it virtually assures them if having no huge buy rate. You would think that they would want to capitalize on the soccer fever in the US but apparently not.

While I understand why you are upset, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single Sports package (MLB, NHL, NBA tickets) that shows nationally broadcasted events. If a game is on ESPN or FOX or VERSUS, it won’t be on the Sports Package. So what Foxsoccer.tv is doing is hardly unusual, in fact, it so common that it is primarily the only policy.

Whether the price increase will be worth it (I remember paying ~$350 a year to watch one or two games a weekend on Directv!), only time will tell.

Sorry, but your point about none of the other sports packages carrying the nationally televised games isn’t true at all. As someone who subscribes to mlb.tv and NFL sunday ticket, you get every out of market game, regardless of who is broadcasting it. For instance, I was watching the Red Sox-Yankees game last night (on ESPN nationwide) on NESN thru my service. The same can be said about sunday ticket (except for the sunday night games on NBC, which are one of the most accessable presentations that I have ever seen).

I can validate a $150 spent per year on mlb.tv because it is available on more platforms (android and ps3) as well as presenting an average of 13 games per day for 6 months straight, and it has unbelievable picture that only gets bogged down if I’m using too many devices, slowing down my wifi connection. The same cannot be said for fs.tv. If they guarantee that my iPhone app will work with an account (failed over and over after much time with customer service) and if they show the live feed for the Fox Soccer “marquee” matches, then I will come back. Till then I’ll be streaming.

Another thing, several have pointed to their lack of customer service and I have a good story about that.

I cancelled my FoxSoccer.TV sub after 2 months last year due to pathetic service and a lack of choices in meaningful matches.

I emailed them asking to cancel my subscription. They waited 3 weeks to cancel it but found time to charge me another month 2 weeks after I emailed them. Figures.

I emailed FoxSoccer demanding they remove the charge and I got no answer so after a week I called my Credit Card company and refused the charge. I kept the email I had sent to FoxSoccer just in case my credit card people needed it for proof.

At $15.00/month it was just low enough to get me to sign up. I use a combination of PlayOn and Apple TV to stream games. The website and menus always seemed clunky and not well designed but I never did experience problems with streaming. I did like the fact that they let you freeze your account, but now I don’t see an option to cancel my subscription and the “Contact Us” section of the website always spits out some XML error when I submit my question. I did manage to find an actual e-mail address and sent a message with my complaints.

After my account was unfrozen (or I imagine so because I got a $20 charge on my credit card), I can no longer stream with PlayOn and Apple TV — the menus show up but no games are listed. Website streams fine.

With only PC streaming now, I can’t justify the $20/month price tag. Plus there is always the hiccups that companies like PlayOn have in updating their software to properly scrape data and stream if Performance Group change how the information on their site is served up.

Can you contact play on about this? The trouble is – I already told them about the redesign and the issues… however they seem to believe that it is my issue. The trouble is, Foxsoccer.tv has about 18000 subscribers, of those I would guess only a handful are using play on – and I seem to be the only one who has reported the issue to them.

The problem is, they changed base urls and video locations – so play on needs to update their parsing info. It’s easy to remedy, but play on seem to be dragging doing so as they are not convinced it is an issue. They cited to me that it is because of the transition and things will fall into place – which they won’t without play on altering their code and issuing a patch.

I’ve contacted PlayOn about other similar issues with different channels, but it’s usually the same response. I think the only time they rush to fix something is if it’s one of the bigger channels like Netflix, Hulu, NFL, MLB, NHL. Since the channels and their parsing method is so integral to how PlayOn works, I think individual channel updates should be automatic so you don’t miss a beat.

They do have a lot of content but it’s not a huge loss for me. Between ESPN3 streaming with PlayOn, a digital antenna that picks up several Spanish-language channels that show lots of soccer games in HD, and Usenet for the rest–all my soccer needs are handled over my Internet connection and a $40 digital antenna.

Hey everyone I am considering just doing the trial of this for the first week and checking it out. Will it be easy to cancel the free trial? Seems people have trouble canceling the subscription, in general, so would not like to have that problem.

Also, mainly I’m interested in the Liverpool match which will be shown delayed, which I can handle as I usually catch Liverpool matches on lfc.tv delayed, and as I bookmark directly to the LFC TV channel I do not see spoilers as I load up right as the replay starts.

Are there spoilers on the foxsoccer.tv site if I will go to watch the Liverpool match Saturday night on my computer?

I decided to check it out during this week’s free trial especially since I’ve dumped my cable for a $250 HTPC hooked up to my big TV & lived happily ever after.

I don’t think I will continue once I have to pay for 1 major reason. The EPL games I actually want to watch aren’t available till midnight of the same day. I’m sorry, but if I want to watch games on delay I can get them for free via a few different download sources that most people know about.

Also, there’s a Russian TV site (etvnet.com) that I subscribe to which has pretty much every football match you can possibly want to watch in better quality than FoxSoccer.TV & on a much smaller delay (games are usually available within 3 hours of the final whistle). Yes, the commentary is in Russian since these are all Russian TV telecasts, but that’s not a problem for me. Even if you don’t speak the language it’s a lot better to be able to actually watch a match then listen to its radio broadcast or follow it via text commentary. They’re also testing live broadcasting now (currently in beta), but that’s available only on their unlimited plans which are $40 a month.

During the week I’m not able to watch the games live usually anyway, so a delay is fine & the Russian site satisfies my needs, but during the weekends when I can actually watch EPL live what would differentiate foxsoccer.tv is the ability to watch any EPL match live. I don’t get why they make games shown live on FSC unavailable till midnight. It’s not like the still small audience for their online service will really compete with their TV audience & foxsoccer.tv costs more then getting FSC on your cable so more money for them.

Let’s be honest here, if HBO GO and Cinemax Go can provide full on demand mobile (laptop/iPad/phone/Android) programming for free to HBO/Max subscribers it’s absolutely ridiculous that when we pay $15.95/mo extra for FS+ in addition to having the sports pack for reg FSC we don’t get FS.tv for free.

I disagree. There are many people who subscribe to just FOXSoccer.tv instead of FOX Soccer Plus (and in some cases instead of FOX Soccer Plus and FOX Soccer). The programming is different. FOXSoccer.tv shows more games than FOX Soccer Plus and FOX Soccer. With HBO GO, you’re getting the same programming you would with HBO on TV.

This sucks all the way around. Direct TV gave up Fox Deportes to keep Fox Soccer Channel and now we get blacked out premier league matches like Arsenal vs Manchester United played 6 hours later as a delay. All crap. Ditching the lot and going to watch the live text on BBC.